Inviting you to think

Main Menu

3 Ways to Analyse The Success of Our Education Policies

Personally I feel that the education minister is the most influential and powerful in the cabinet. Not only does he have the say on school holidays (which have a huge impact on traffic, the travel industry, the entertainment industry and fuel consumption), he is also responsible for what will happen in the following 10 to 20 years. I don’t think that we can judge the success of an education policy by just observing the passing rate of a huge public examination. The passing rate and good grades reflect the amount of effort put into scoring but not the success of an education policy. If the objective of education is to create a better society, we might want to have a look at these following statistics.

These are only mere suggestions.

1. Crime Rate

If education is meant for the greater good of the society, it should have a direct effect on the crime rate of a nation. What is the use of having religious and moral studies in schools anyway? And isn’t the whole idea of implementing disciplinary action in schools supposed to educate our children on legitimate behaviour? What we can do is analyse the age group of people involved in crime. Next observe the years in which they received their education and analyse the education policy implemented at that moment. Then we can see part of the success or failure of an education policy. This may give us an idea of what to do in the future. It’s 2012 and I do believe that it will not be much of a problem to analyse the crime rate and education policies of the years that have gone by.

2. Qualification and job comparison

Most people study to get a job to afford a living, get married, have children and continue earning so their children could study and repeat the cycle all over again. It’s a silly cycle but that’s how we live. If the education provided was meant to open job opportunities, it might as well be down-right accurate in terms of qualification and job requirement. We can analyse the government and private employees and their qualifications. It might be surprising how some are overqualified and under-qualified. This will help indicate skills that our policy has failed to appreciate and skills that we overrate. Also, current observation will be relevant to older policies. Nonetheless it still gives us a guideline on future decisions concerning education.

3. Purchase of knowledge material

The pursuit of knowledge should be a never-ending process and the education system should encourage our students to pursue knowledge even after their education years. Since there is a tax relief (in Malaysia) on education material, it would not be hard to make an analysis on this matter. People will make an effort to claim their tax relief through receipts which will give us an opportunity to analyse the type of reading material that they purchase. Through their claims we can also classify their age groups. We will have to cancel out school-work books and tertiary study material from this analysis because they don’t reflect the free will of the pursuit of knowledge. All fields of knowledge should be taken into account.

____________________

We’re just trying to contribute for the greater good of the society. What else do you think could be a reflection of the education policy? Share with us and the rest of our readers in the comments section below.